Monday, March 01, 2004
Heraclitus The Obscure --
by guest poster Heraclitus of Ephesus
(There is a unity in opposites.)
Things taken together are wholes and not wholes, something which is being brought together and brought apart, which is in tune and out of tune; out of all things there comes a unity, and out of a unity all things.
God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger; he undergoes alteration in the way that fire, when it is mixed with spices, is named according to the scent of each of them.
(The unity of the world is not apparent, it lies beneath the surface and depends on a balance between opposites.)
An unapparent connexion is stronger than an apparent one.
The real constitution is accustomed to hide itself.
They do not comprehend how being at variance it agrees with itself: there is a back-stretched connexion, as in the bow and the lyre.
(Men should try to comprehend the underlying coherence of things: it is expressed by Logos, the formula or element of arrangement common to all things.)
Of the Logos which is as I describe it men always prove to be uncomprehending, both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Logos men are like people of no experience, even when they experience such words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its constitution and declare how it is; but the rest of men fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forget what they do when they sleep.
Therefore it is necessary to follow the common; but although the Logos is common the many live as though they had a private understanding.
Listening not to me but to the Logos it is wise to agree that all things are one.
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by guest poster Heraclitus of Ephesus
(There is a unity in opposites.)
Things taken together are wholes and not wholes, something which is being brought together and brought apart, which is in tune and out of tune; out of all things there comes a unity, and out of a unity all things.
God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger; he undergoes alteration in the way that fire, when it is mixed with spices, is named according to the scent of each of them.
(The unity of the world is not apparent, it lies beneath the surface and depends on a balance between opposites.)
An unapparent connexion is stronger than an apparent one.
The real constitution is accustomed to hide itself.
They do not comprehend how being at variance it agrees with itself: there is a back-stretched connexion, as in the bow and the lyre.
(Men should try to comprehend the underlying coherence of things: it is expressed by Logos, the formula or element of arrangement common to all things.)
Of the Logos which is as I describe it men always prove to be uncomprehending, both before they have heard it and when once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Logos men are like people of no experience, even when they experience such words and deeds as I explain, when I distinguish each thing according to its constitution and declare how it is; but the rest of men fail to notice what they do after they wake up just as they forget what they do when they sleep.
Therefore it is necessary to follow the common; but although the Logos is common the many live as though they had a private understanding.
Listening not to me but to the Logos it is wise to agree that all things are one.
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